"New Music" or Classical Music Less Than 100 Years Old

Like "early music" that I talked about a while back, "new music" is a broad term that refers to 'new' classical music. Composers like Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Steve Reich have been around since the late '60s, so you see that 'new' is a relative term in the classical music world. Glass and Reich got lumped in with the minimalism movement, because much of their work is characterized by simple, repeated patterns and motifs that evolve over the performance of the piece. The Glass sound is almost always readily recognizable, and I can't say I've acquired a taste. Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" is a repeated motif that changes as notes in the pattern are dropped. I think you either love or hate this piece, and I guess I love it, because I have 2 different recordings. There isn't a whole of of difference between the two versions; the ECM premiere version is a little brighter and moves a little faster. The little vocal bits remind me of chirping birds, so the whole piece has a sunny spring feeling to me.








John Adams sounds like a patchwork quilt of a lot of contemporary composers, and "The Chairman Dances" is almost like a resume of his styles.
Best for me is the title track, an instrumental piece excerpted from the opera "Nixon in China", and "Common Tones in Simple Time" slows down as the piece progresses, ending with tinkling chimes and large floating chords, like you've drifted into space surrounded by planets and stars.








Arvo Part takes minimalism to the furthest degree; his pieces have much in common with early Church chant. He started out composing some fairly spiky dissonant works, then developed what he called "tintinnabulation", or the music of bells. His newer works seem simple, but they somehow tap into something primal. A good example is "Passio", a vocal work with biblical lyrics (in Latin) from the last moments of Christ on the Cross. The 70 minute piece is in a minor key for almost the entire time, until the last bit changes to a major key, and it's like the heavens open, a very moving emotional moment.
"Fratres" was a piece on the first ECM disc, and the Telarc disc is mostly versions of "Fratres" with a lot of variations in scoring. Probably Part's most recognizable work is "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten", which Michael Moore used to such stunning effect to accompany scenes of the Twin Towers aftermath in the film "Fahrenheit 9/11".

You Know This, Even Though You Think You Don't

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra was a project of the late Simon Jeffes, a classically trained musician who created instrumental music that sounds like it was perfomed by a lost tribe, playing acoustic instruments and influenced by Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Not as weird as that sounds -- the songs are created with circular patterns and motifs, and to top it all off, there's a whiff of British whimsy. You've heard some of these pieces on TV shows, commercials, and film soundtracks (especially "Perpetuum Mobile" and "Music for a Found Harmonium"). "Preludes, Airs and Yodels" has the added bonus of featuring the Patrick Street version of "Harmonium" that turns it into a furious Irish reel.

Nick

I'm usually not a fan of using songs I like for commercials, but since Volkswagen used Nick Drake's song "Pink Moon" a few years back, it's exposed his talent to a far greater audience, and for that, I'm grateful. Nick's story is a tragic one, sensitive singer-songwriter too nervous and too depressed to function in the glare of the spotlight, his genius only building an audience after his death.
There's a pretty decent "best of" CD, but you really should own the 3 original releases, nicely reissued, spiffed up with classy slipcase sleeves (pictured are the original covers, including what has to be in the Top Ten Worst Covers Ever for "Pink Moon".) Then of course you need "Made to Love Magic", because that collects the harrowing "Black Eyed Dog", thought for years to be the last song Nick recorded until the discovery a few years ago of "Tow the Line" (also included here.)

"Bryter Layter" seems a bit over-produced to me, but Joe Boyd claims it's the one perfect album he worked on. I've gotten used to it over the years, and can even listen to "Poor Boy" without cringing anymore. If I had to pick a favorite, it'd be "Five Leaves Left" but really, they're all great. What a gift, what a loss.

Stravinsky

Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" has always been a favorite, despite hearing (at an impressionable age) Stokowski's version (complete with dinosaurs!) featured in Disney's "Fantasia". I listened a lot to the Pierre Boulez recording, with his surgically precise rhythms and whiplash dynamics, so much so that I internalized the recording --- Stravinsky's own version sounded anemic to me.

A few years ago, Valery Gergiev began cutting a swath through the Russian classical repertoire, and his version of "The Rite" struck me as brash to the point of rudeness, with a dynamic range Boulez and his engineers could only dream of. "That's not how it's supposed to sound!" I fumed -- then I remembered the stories of the piece's Paris premiere and how the totally unexpected cacaphony put the audience in an uproar. Ah, congrats, Valery -- you made the work exciting again after I'd carefully mummified it in my head.

Recently a DVD performance of "The Rite" and "The Firebird" conducted by Gergiev "Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes" came to my attention, and as wonderful as "The Rite" is (complete with a reconstruction of the original choreography by Nijinsky), it's "The Firebird" that I found utterly compelling, due to the dancing of Ekaterina Kondaurova as the Firebird. I know nothing about ballet (and probably wouldn't admit it if I did) but even my uncultured brain could appreciate the stunning work of Kondaurova. Don't miss it!